In December 2007, the FSC announced that it was “dissociating” itself from the giant Sinar Mas-owned Indonesian paper company Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) – see statement below. The news was mostly greeted by the environmental movement, though there is some suspicion that the FSC only took this unusual step because the possible certification of APP had been exposed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. WWF in particular has issued stinging reports of the company’s greewashing of its destruction of forests to feed its pulp mill in Riau province, Sumatra. (For WWF, this was yet another ‘logger love-in’ turned sour, having signed an agreement with APP and its parent company in 2003 to advise on sustainable forest management.)

In his long and thoughtful comment to an earlier FSC-Watch posting on ‘Legality Verification’, Jeff Hayward, Lead Auditor for SmartWood, concluded by saying “we look forward to further inputs. We believe in a transparent consultation process; this is healthy and constructive.” In that spirit, FSC-Watch is hereby providing further, transparent, input.

Some readers of FSC-Watch will no doubt have been surprised to learn that the UK-based NGO Soil Association has, through it’s subsidiary certification body WoodMark, started the process of certifying parts of the notorious Indonesian plantation company Perhutani.

The Soil Association’s FSC-accredited certifier WoodMark has just announced a ‘stakeholder consultation’ for the potential certification of two management units of the huge Indonesian plantation company, Perhutani.